Painting the town red: Lydia Lunch and Andrew Coates Photo: The Barman.
Lydia Lunch
+ Rebel Yell
The Factory Floor, Marrickville, NSW
Sunday 21 June 2026
Lydia Lunch and Andrew Coates are not a Suicide tribute band. Not in the popular form of the term. Let’s call them “Suicide adjacent” by virtue of Coates’ Melbourne band, Black Cab, playing lots of their music in the past, and Lydia being the titular Queen of New York City’s No Wave scene, who saw and knew the seminal duo.
A gig billed as Lydia Lunch playing the songs of Suicide and its late frontman, Alan Vega, might not sound like typical I-94 Barfly fare but man (or woman) does not live on Detroit rock alone. Much to the disdain of some around me, I have a deep and abiding love of the New York Lower East Side Sound in all its diverse forms. A sloppy Johnny Thunders lead break or a Johnny Ramone downstroke lands as well as a Tom Verlaine vibrato-fueled filigree or Marty Rev’s monloithic Motorik beats.
So good on promoter Press Play for bringing Lydia Lunch back to Australasia. There’s a deep connection between her and the late Rowland S Howard and Nick Cave, which makes Melbourne adopted home turf. The links runs deeper than sharing NYC’s weather patterns.
There’s also a connection between Lydia and Tex Perkins with the Beasts of Bourbon and her sharing mutual admiration. Tex is absent tonight as support, but he and Lydia will split a bill in the unlikely setting of the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta later this week.
It’s a little-known fact that Suicide were almost going to be part of the only All Tomorrows Partys roadshow in Australia in 2008.Co-promoter Tim Pittman and his UK business partners were in talks with the band only for Alan Vega or Marty Rev, maybe both, decrying the prospect of a 17-hour trans-Pacific plane trip without nicotine. Vega has since passed on and Rev’s now aged 78 so he’s unlikely to head this way in a hurry.
Tonight, ofm course I missed the support band despite assurances that they weren’t a Billy Idol cover band, and the room fills quickly as main event set time approaches. The 250-capacity Factory Floor has had a makeover with a revamped sound system. It’s soon put through its paces as the towering Coates takes his place behind his keyboard rack and summons a lurching rhythm from his rig.
Ms Lunch then appears, a diminutive figure framed by stark lights and smoke. It takes about five bars of opening Suicide track “Touch Me” for us to collectively teleported onto a stoop outside a Norfolk Street drug den in late ‘70s Manhattan. “Johnny” proceeds to kick us down the road, past the queues of customers outside hollowed out brownstones to trip over nodding junkies and a pile of trash cans.
Sonically speaking, it’s as if Alphabet City was never gentrified and the shell of CBGB isn't now a parody of its former self where they sell $300 T-shirts.
The clanking, chugging rhythm of “Ghost Rider” evokes a cheer and it’s good enough to send our imaginations off to Max’s Kansas City for happy hour, as Coates adds celebratory rockabilly whoops.
These aren’t straight renditions of the originals. The pair update “Viet Vet” (from Vega’s “Collision Drive” LP) to call out the plight of veterans from more recent conflicts. “Frankie Teardrop” is reworked but falls flat of the chilling original in the vocal department, while “Rocket USA” hits nice and hard.
A lot of thought has gone into this show’s staging with the digital lighting programmed to synch with each track. Lydia has two microphones on stands flanking her and although they’re both live, the extra one seems to be more a stage prop than of practical assistance to her vocal.
Andrew Coates cranking those Motorik beats.
Why someone who’s lived and breathed the songs of Suicide needs a sheaf of lyric sheets on a music stand will remain a mystery. I considered emailing to ask but Lunch’s rants about the penetration of social media, her antipathy to camera phones (“put that away, motherfucker!”) and forthright views about the evils of being a slave to digital media gave me second thoughts.
There’s irony in all this; how would anyone have known the gig was on without access to the Internet?
If you were looking for confrontation you would have found it in bucketloads There was no shortage of world leaders (Trump, Netanyahu and Putin among them) copping a “Fuck you” from the stage via updated lyrics. But even No Wave Queens need some respite, and Lydia takes a few short Lunch breaks (get it?) at the back of the stage during the set.
Which is over all too soon after 41 minutes. No encore, no thanks. Or in the words of The Angels who are due to play the big room upstairs in August: No Way. Get Fucked, Fuck off. With tickets 50 bucks each that’s about $1.26 a minute (inclduing booking fee.) Still, it would have beaten being taken away to Marseilles or Taking a Long Line.
